ITS Librarian Rita Evans Wins Award

April 13, 2012

Rita Evans, Director of the Harmer E. Davis Transportation Library, will receive the 2012 Professional Achievement Awardof the Transportation Division of the Special Libraries Association (SLA) for her distinguished service.

The award will be presented at the SLA annual conference in Chicago in July.

The SLA, an international organization with more than 9,000 members in over 75 countries, is an association for library and information professionals working in business, government, law, finance, non-profit, and academic organizations and institutions.

The purpose of the award is to honor those who have made a significant contribution to transportation libraries and librarianship, according to Sheila Hatchell, Chair of SLA's Transportation Division.

“This award is testimony to Rita’s dedication and the valuable contributions that she has made to transportation libraries, in addition to her distinguished leadership of the Harmer E. Davis Transportation Library here at UC Berkeley,” said ITS Director Samer Madanat.

Evans joined the library staff in 2001 and became Director in 2007. She has maintained the tradition of the library as the "living room" of ITS, where students and faculty gather to study and socialize.

Established in 1948, the Harmer E. Davis Transportation Library is home to one of the pre-eminent transportation collections in the United States. It supports students, faculty and researchers, both within the Institute and throughout the University, as well as providing services to transportation practitioners in public agencies and to researchers around the world.

Its collection includes information on highway and traffic engineering, public transportation, aviation, railroads, and maritime transportation. It is also interdisciplinary: both engineering and public policy subjects related to transportation issues are an important focus.

The library is one of eight affiliated libraries on campus that cooperate with, but are not funded by, the main campus library system. The ITS library is funded by the Institute to provide services to all ITS units.